


Forget-Me-Not

by kiitos



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 20:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiitos/pseuds/kiitos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's in a bar he doesn't like drinking vodka he can't afford. He's trying to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget-Me-Not

Christopher Marlowe likes words, he likes the patterns of speech, the way people talk and the way they use words in ways that nobody else would. So when Christopher Marlowe met William Shakespeare, he fell completely in love.

Shakespeare had used the word ubiquitous in a sentence and Marlowe’s eyebrow twitched, he described his previous work environment as lackadaisical and Marlowe’s pen faltered. Then he suggested that whoever had painted the picture on the office wall had used phantasmagorical colours and Marlowe had gasped audibly.

Shakespeare had turned to him and smiled. “And this capricious soul must be the great Christopher Marlowe.” He said good-naturedly and stuck out a hand.

Marlowe shook his hand and nodded that yes he was and he didn’t even have it in him to complain about the unfair description. (The man called him capricious instead of twitchy or flighty and that just made Marlowe’s heart soar.)

Now though, now though, Marlowe sits quietly on a barstool in a small bar down a side-street in London. The vodka is over-priced but it has a habit of burning away all the bad memories and Marlowe likes that. He’s always thought that chasing your sorrows to the bottom of a hi-ball is pointless because there’s no-where for them to go and they end up staring back at you. But he does it anyway, he’s lost for words and the vodka makes him feel better about that. (Hm, better, a month ago he might have said… well it doesn’t matter, it’s not a month ago it’s now.)

The bar maid takes pity as she always does and drops another shot into his vodka lemon and lime without too many questions. A quick ‘alright there?’ and she’s done when he nods.

He downs most of it and it burns but the bad memories don’t go away, it’s got to the stage where the alcohol doesn’t make him feel any better. The bar maid looks at him with a question in her eyes but he couldn’t even explain if he tried.

He thinks about William Shakespeare and his silver threaded tongue drawing patterns on Marlowe’s chest, tracing words in invisible ink and making him shiver. William calls him Kit and he purrs obediently, he tells him he’s incandescent, luminescent, and generally brilliant and Kit laughs.

Laughed.

Doesn’t laugh anymore.

He told Will not to come to that bar that night. Marlowe didn’t always come to this bar with its over-priced vodka and blue strip lighting, and it’s bar maid that drops a shot of vodka in his hi-ball when he looks too mopey.

He liked their old bar but he can’t go there anymore, (he told Will, he told him so many times) but Will never listened.

And the night Will came to find him, came to stop him doing something stupid like he always did. Will told him, was always telling him he was sick of the blood in the sink and the endless black eyes and he wanted his Kit back but Marlowe wasn’t Kit when he was drunk. He was something different that attracted a lot of attention.

That night when Will came to find him he had attracted the attention of the wrong kind of people and found himself in a fight he could never have won. And then Will was there and there was a knife and blood (Will’s blood) on Marlowe’s hands.

He’d never seen someone die before and Will died alright, died in Marlowe’s arms with his blood pooling beneath them. He’d whispered something just before the light went out and it could have been anything but it sounded like love and that’s what broke him.

Finally broke him.

So Marlowe sits in a bar he doesn’t like, drinking vodka he can’t afford and trying to forget.

It’s not working.                                                                                                                                                                       

He rather thinks it never will.


End file.
